Web Collaboration for Software Engineering

Web collaboration for software engineering
Tiago Mourão Teixeira
Supervisor: Ademar Aguiar, Co-supervisor: Nuno Flores
MIEIC - 17 July 2009

Presentation outline
Collaboration: What and why?
Background on collaboration research areas
Collaborative Software
Software Engineering Tools
Problem Statement and Solution
Prototype and Experiment
Conclusions and Future Research
2

Collaboration: what is?
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Collaboration is a process where two or more parties
work together towards a common goal.
3

Collaboration: why?
Social nature
Complexity
Dimension
4

Background on collaboration research areas
Groupware
Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW)
Collaboration in Software Engineering
5

Groupware
Original definition:
“intentional group processes plus software to support them” (Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz)
Main goal
Use computers to assist groups in:
Communicating
Collaborating
Coordinating
6

cscw
Definition:
“ CSCW examines the possibilities and effects of technological support for humans involved in collaborative group communication and work processes” (J. M. Bowers and S.D. Benford)
Interdisciplinary field
7

Groupware vs. cscw
CSCW
Groupware
8

cscw classification
9

Categories of collaboration
Unstructured communication
Coordination (E-mail, IM, …)
Meetings and conversations in workplace
Structured communication
Formal and semi-formal artifacts
(Reports, Diagrams, ...)
Each artifact has its own model
Collaboration in software engineering
10

Collaboration in software engineering
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Collaborative software: asynchronous and different place cscw
12

Collaborative software: asynchronous and different place cscw
13

Collaborative software: asynchronous and same place cscw
14

Collaborative software: synchronous and different place cscw
15

Collaborative software: synchronous and same place cscw
16

Collaborative software: social software
17

Collaborative software: social software
18

Software engineering tools
47 tools distributed among 6 areas:
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Software engineering tools: Criteria
Collaboration
Awareness
Communication
Collective Knowledge
Integration
Other characteristics
Context awareness
20

Software engineering tools: open issues
E-mail
Depended on external services
Used primarily for notification purposes
Group calendars
Lack in the Engineering Management area
21

Lack of features popular in the Web
22

Inexistence of:
Online whiteboard
Usages: draft of a diagram (Design)
Recommender
Screen sharing
Social bookmarking
Social cataloging
Lack of:
23

Problem statement
Two gaps in the state of the art
Need for better web-based tools covering a project’s life cycle
Few studies on the impact of integrating collaboration features in those tools, by designing and conducting an experiment
24

Problem statement
Uniqueness of the problem
Collaboration tools
Lack of support for the life-cycle of a project
The majority provided support by integration with other tools
Studies
Measured the effects of collaboration in the workplace
Lack of features integrated in web-based tools
Didn’t monitor the life-cycle of a project
However…
25

Solution
First gap:
Integrate collaboration features as plugins into a web-based tool (Redmine) and cover the life-cycle of a project
Second gap:
Design and conduct an experiment for assessing the prototype’s effectiveness.
26

Prototype
Features integrated as plugins into Redmine, a project management web application
27

Prototype
Features analyzed according to four criteria:
Time
Value
Innovation
Preference
28

Prototype
Recommendations
29

Prototype
Social networking
30

Prototype
Architectural patterns: 3-tier and MVC
31

Prototype
Logical architecture
32

Prototype
Physical architecture
33

Experiment
Experimental Group
Control Group
34

Experiment
Subjects must be:
Familiar of collaborative software.
Have participated at least in one Software Engineering project.
Be willing perform teamwork.
Attributes of interest:
Task completion time.
Tools used.
9 tasks for developing game Pong in Scratch, an interactive programming language.
Experiment wasn’t conducted due to the subjects’ unavailability.
35

Conclusions
Objectives were in its majority successfully achieved
Relevant achievements
Depth and broadness of the research
Degree of integration between plugins
High number of implemented requirements
36

Conclusions
Contributions
Research multiple areas and use them to prioritize the features
Innovation:
Prototype
Recommendations, Social bookmarking and Social cataloging plugins
Experiment
37

Conclusions
Future Research
Conduct the experiment
Resolve the identified open issues
Fields of study
Integration between web and desktop-based tools
Effective support for Global Software Development
Migration of tools to the web
Prototype’s future developments
E-mail with tags
E-mail and feeds notifications of “watched” users’ actions
Recommendations based on implicit data collection
The prototype only provides generic support
38

Discussion
Thank you!
39